Disclosure

Site search


  • Web Virtual Economics

Community

Syndication (RSS)

  • Subscribe in Bloglines Subscribe in NewsGator Online Add to Google Add to My AOL Subscribe in Rojo Add to netvibes

Syndication (email)

  • Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

Integration

Links to this blog

Books I've been reading

« Maybe tomorrow | Main | Music at the edge »

Accurate measurement is apparently less ethical than guesswork

Much heat over the last couple of days about ZDNet's policy (amongst others) of remunerating bloggers based on the page impressions their work generates. Steve Rubel finds the practice "raises an eyebrow"; Nick Carr characteristically points out that it's being going on for months.

Months? Centuries! Certainly since newspaper owners have paid writers to write for their publications. Jeff Jarvis rightly says that "we are all...influenced by our traffic"; Mathew Ingram that "
newspapers already promote writers who draw a large readership".

A handful of newspaper columnists draw rock-star salaries. Many more are paid what their editors think they are worth. This assessment involves intuition, personal preference and the inexact science of market research, some combination of which tells their editors that they draw the readers to justify those numbers. I am honestly mystified that people can effectively claim (HuffPo) this sort of unsubstantiated editorial guesswork is ethical but accurate measurement of a writer's draw is not. The claim seems...too far from disinterested to be itself considered wholly ethical. Editors are paid considerable sums to make subjective judgement calls from which writers expect to benefit. Journalists protesting against changing that rather murky relationship to a fair, impartial and transparent measurement of quantifiable appeal strikes me as more than a little suspect. 

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5b7853ef00d834d9603f53ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Accurate measurement is apparently less ethical than guesswork:

Comments

Pay is a weird thing. It'd be hard for people to budget, I suspect, if their pay were as volatile as their productivity in a world like journalism. Whoever breaks the code on these kinds of new, increasingly typical labor markets is likely to find themselves inventor of a new form of company.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

July 2009

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

Blogroll Search

Blog powered by TypePad
Member since 03/2006